


Ghosts

by HolmesianDeduction (orphan_account)



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Absent Parents, Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Félix Tholomyès - Freeform, Gen, Parenthood, sort of, that works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 15:12:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1271092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/HolmesianDeduction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fantine never had a place in her heart for resentment after Cosette, and Jean Valjean was never as good at questioning things as he liked to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leviafan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leviafan/gifts).



             She didn’t resent him like she supposed people expected her to – not even when things began to unravel, and when things were at their worst, her frustration and anger were never levelled at him. It wasn’t that Felix was guiltless in her eyes; over time she had come to terms with what he had done, she just didn’t have it in her heart to hate him for it. He had, after all, for some small span of time, given her joy, even if it had been quickly replaced with sorrow.

             Sometimes, when the days were longest, she would catch herself dreaming of him at night, and in her dreams, at least, they were always still together. Him with his tangled dark curls and dancing eyes and her smiling with her chin on his shoulder and her fingers laced in his. It was always warm in her dreams, always summertime, and when she awoke, she was always noticeably colder, the only trace of warmth contained in the small form curled up against her. It was only during these hours, when the sun had yet to rise and the morning fog still hung heavy in the air, that she allowed herself to weep briefly and silently, so as not to wake the child whose head rested against her chest. Whether she wept for everything she had lost or for everything that had been, she was never entirely sure, and it took her fingers carding through Cosette’s rich brown hair, fingertips catching in the faintest wispy beginnings of curls to settle her breathing and bring her back to some semblance of calm before her daughter woke, as young children are apt to do, with the sun.

             That was Felix’s other double-edged gift, Fantine sometimes found herself thinking. He had burdened her with a child, but in the same fell swoop, had gifted her with what had become the joy of her life, one that, though small, in many ways filled the void left by her father. And how could she resent either of them when they both somehow saw in her something that no one else seemed capable of quite spotting?

             Beside her, Cosette stirred in her sleep, nuzzling into her mother’s shoulder.

 

              _She must favour her father._

             The thought drifted, not for the first time, to the top of Jean Valjean’s mind as he watched the girl leaning on the window sill, thick, dark curls coiled about her neck and half-concealing the dark green eyes – eyes that reminded him all too much of her mother’s feverish, knowing glare, but that had only ever looked at him with a patient adoration. Hearing him behind her, she turned to look at him, and while the shadows of Fantine in her face reached out to him, he couldn’t help but wonder about the features that he couldn’t place; about the darkness of her hair and the slight quirk of her lips on one side of her mouth, and about the way that her hands seemed in constant motion even when they were still.

             Shaking her head, she turned back to look out the window, though Valjean was all too aware of her watchful gaze following him from the corner of her eye, and with a half-smile, he allowed himself to sit in the chair nearest the window, just in view of Cosette, whose lips twitched into a smile at the gesture.

             There were some things, he had come to accept, that would always remain a mystery when it came to his adopted daughter – in some instances, to both of them, and in moments like this, he thought that perhaps there was a strange comfort in not knowing.


End file.
